In late 2007, APC members from almost forty countries and five continents met to define the strategic priorities for APC until 2012. They assessed the context faced by APC and civil society organisations using internet and other ICTs for social change. They considered trends in accessing the internet (including the role of mobile phones), in internet and information policy and regulation and in social networking and media. They also looked at other factors like climate change, which will have a huge impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. After several days of deliberation, six issues were identified as key strategic areas that APC must tackle to ensure that the internet remains free and open and that more and more people can connect to it and use it to improve their lives and create a more just world.

After several days of intense debate, APC members identified six issues as the key strategic areas that APC must tackle in the next five years: advocating for affordable internet access for all, ICTs and the environment, building the “information commons” , defending internet rights, critical and creative engagement of emerging technologies from a social change perspective and improving governance, especially governance of the internet. Why did APC members prioritise those six issues? What are the key challenges and opportunities that they perceive regarding the freedom of the internet and its use for social justice in the coming years?

The Family Alliance for Development and Cooperation (FADECO) has come a long way since 1993, when Joseph Sekiku and friends formed an alliance to help overcome poverty in north-western Tanzania. Starting as a network of people sharing an internet connection, the small telecentre eventually became a computer literacy training station, an internet café, and has expanded to an informative radio station reaching two million listeners, many of whom are farmers. Radio France International interviewed Joseph after his story was featured in an APC study called Unbounded Possibilities: Observations on sustaining rural ICTs. Listen to the interview (off-site).

Can Facebook and YouTube help the poor tackle their pressing problems? Or is this promise just hype? One is faced with tough questions: Can “Web 2.0 tools” directly influence the poor themselves? Can those interested in poverty work do better to start with the “situation” rather than the “technology”? Or should one think big and dream of a network of networks encompassing a billion children and their teachers, families and friends — nearly all of the poor people in the world, and most of the rich? BytesForAll co-founder and journalist Frederick Noronha takes a look at the issue.